28 \vhy are you losing weight? Are you d o "I" on a let r She had put down her towel, but she continued to shake her hair and rough it with her fingers. She moved around the room whIle she talked, and seemed to fill the room with restlessness-a characteristic that might have annoyed him in someone else but that in her seemed graceful, fascinating, the prompting of some Inner urgency. " I ' d o 0 " 1 O d m not IetIng, 1e saI . "You're not ill?" Her concern was swift and genuine; he might have been her oldest friend. "Oh, no. It's just that I've been try- ing to cook for myself." "Oh, you poor boy," she said. "Do you know your measurements?" "N 0." "\Vell, we'll have to take them." Moving, stirring the air and shaking her hair, she crossed the room and got a yellow tape measure from a drawer. In order to measure his waist she had to put her hands under his jacket-a gesture that seemed amorous. When the measure was around his waist, he put his arms around her waist and thrust himself against her. She merely laughed and shook her hair. Then she pushed him away lightly-much more like a promise than a rebuff. "Oh, no," she said, "not tonight, not tonight, my dear." She crossed the room and faced him from there. Her face was tender, and darkened with indecision, but when he came toward her she hung her head, 1 k 0 0 I " N " 1 s 100 It vIgorous y. 0, no, no, s le said. "Not tonight. Please." " B I 0 ?" ut can see you agaIn 0 "Of course, but not tonight." She crossed the room and laid her hand o h o 1 k " N " h agaInst IS c lee. ow, you go, s e said, "and I'll call you. You're very nice, but now you go." He stumbled out of the door, stunned but feeling wonderfully Important. He had been in the room three minutes- four at the most-and what had there been between them, this instantaneous recognition of their fitness as lovers? He had been excited when he first saw her-had been excited by her strong, gay voice. Why had they been able to move so effortlessly, so directly toward one another? And where was his sense of good and evil, his passionate desire to be worthy, manly, and, within his vows, chaste? He was a member of the Church of Christ, he was a member of the vestry, a devout and habitual com- municant, sincerely sworn to defend the articles of faith. He had already committed a mortal sin. But driving under the maples and through the sum- mer night, he could not, under the most FIR.E WOR.KS These spasms and chrysanthemums of lIght are like emotions exploding under a curved nIght that corresponds to the dark firmament within. See now the libidinous flare, spinning on its stick in vain resistance to the upright ego and mortality's gravity; behold, above, the sudden bloom, turquoise, each tip a comet, of pride-followed, after an empty bang, by an ebbIng amber galaxy, despair. We feel our secrets bodied forth like flags as wIde as half the sky. Now passions, polychrome and coruscatIng, crowd one upon the other in a final fit, a terminal display that tilts the children's faces back in bleached dismay and sparks an infant's crying in the grass. They do not understand, the younger ones, what thunderheads and nebulae, what waterfalls and momentary roses fill the world's one aging skull, and are relieved when in a falling veil the last awed outburst crumbles to reveal the pattern on the playroom wall of tame and stable stars. . intense examination, find anything in his instincts but goodness and magna- nimity and a much enlarged sense of the world. He struggled with some scrambled eggs, practiced the inven- tions, and tried to sleep. 0 marÏto in città! It was the memory of Mrs. Zagreb's front that tormented him. Its softness and fragrance seemed to hang in the air while he waited for sleep, it followed into his dreams, and when he woke his face seemed buried in Mrs. Zagreb's front, glistening like marble and tasting to his thirsty lips as various and soft as the airs of a summer night. I N the morning, he took a cold show- er, but Mrs. Zagreb's front seemed merely to wait outside the shower cur- -JOHN UPDIKE . tain. It rested against hIS cheek as he drove to the train, read over his shoulder as he rode the eight-thirty-three, jiggled along with him through the shuttle and the downtown traIn, and haunted him through the business day. He thought he was going mad. As soon as he got home, he looked up her number in the Social Register that his wife kept by the tele- phone. This was a mistake, of course, but he found her number in the local directory and called her . "Your trou- d " 1 O d " y sers are rea y, s le saI. ou can come and get them whenever you want. Now, if you'd like." She called for him to come in. He found her in the living room, and she handed him hIs trousers. Then he was shy and wondered If he hadn't invented the night before. Here, with his shy- ness, Was the truth, and all the rest had been imagining. Here was a widowed seamstress handing some trousers to a lonely man, no longer young, in a frame house that needed paint, on Maple A ve- nue. The world was ruled by com- mon sense, legitimate paSSIons, and articles of faith. She shook her head. This then was a mannerism and had nothing to do with washing her hair. She pushed It off her forehead; ran her fingers through the dark curls. "If you have time for a drink," she said,